Project Planning When Your Creative Brain Just Wants to Go With the Flow
“I just don’t have time to plan” AND/OR “I like to go with the flow.”
If you’ve said these statements but still seem to hustle all the time, this post is for you. You need to learn project planning skills.
Several times in my corporate career, I was assigned to manage a project and found out they had already decided when it would be completed, but they hadn’t built the plan.
This may seem normal, and for a while, I thought it was the logic process. But I’ll tell you that determining the due date before project planning only works if you have unlimited people and money along with it. I never got either of those.
Project planning is a crucial skill for web designers so you can maintain your creative energy and client expectations.
Key Takeaways:
Insights project planning provides
How to plan in a useful way
Finding flexibility in your plans
Risks and dependencies that could impact your plan
Project Planning Provides Insights
Whether it is for a specific project or to reach a goal, planning, while seemingly tedious, can provide incredible insight.
A path to reach the finish line, even if all the specific steps aren’t known.
Risks that could potentially derail your path and how to avoid them.
Dependencies between work you’ll need to accomplish, as well as tasks that may need to be completed by someone else, whose time you don’t own.
An estimated timeline of how long it will take.
How to Plan in a Useful Way
Finding a way to build a plan that doesn’t seem restrictive takes practice and adjustments. Every person and business is different, which is why I prefer to work 1-on-1 with my clients.
Find a way to map all the things you think you’ll need to do to accomplish the project or goal. You may not know all the steps, and that’s ok.
For many creatives, this ends up on paper. Allow yourself space to edit and draw, creating the path between your current state and your ideal future state. During this process, highlight any areas that are unclear, pose a risk or potential delay, and anything that is a “nice to have” but not a “must have”.
When selecting a place to store all these steps to your goals, pick a tool that provides flexibility and growth potential. The minute you begin to outsource any work, a pen and paper method is no longer efficient. I love ClickUp for many reasons, including its updated features, calendar sync, and rollup views.
Finding Flexibility
Effective project planning is essential to ensure tasks are completed on time and within budget, but it also means you need should build in time to be creative.
Don’t block yourself down to specific times of a day, but plan with a week in mind rather than a day to give yourself flexibility to create when you feel creative! Tracking your activities on a weekly basis gives you more opportunity to go with the flow while still keeping structure in your business.
Remember that no one reaches 100% capacity in 10 seconds. Don’t assume you can sit down to complete an hour-long task in one hour.
Think about a car entering a highway: it slowly builds speed before reaching its ideal speed.
We are the same way. It takes a minute for us to get our minds fully engulfed in the project. Give yourself some breathing room when you plan how long tasks will take.
Risks and Dependencies
What are risks and dependencies, and how do they factor into your goals? These are usually reserved for corporate meetings when discussing a project. The definition of a project is a temporary work effort with a clear beginning and end.
A goal is no different: an action you are trying to achieve that has a specific start (when you decided to make it a priority) and an end (when you reach it).
Identify risks by taking a step back and looking at anything that might derail how long it will take to reach the goal. Once you’ve identified the items, think about how likely they are to happen.
Example: If my current supplier can’t provide this new packaging or the lead time is too long, I would have to delay or spend more time vetting a new supplier. OR if my babysitting cancels or quits, I won’t have as much time to work on this goal.
Look at the risks that are more likely to happen and think about how you might be able to defend against them. Sometimes you might just have to accept the risk, but other times you can build in a safety net to help if it does happen.
Dependencies are tasks that must happen before another can happen. There are dependencies in everything we do! I can’t post to social media until I set up an account and write the caption.
The dependencies that are important to identify are the tasks someone else owns. If you are dependent on another person to complete their job before you can move forward, you’ll need to factor that into your plan. Usually, it will take them longer than you’d like, which slows down your progress. Plan for this extra time in advance and start making requests early to help prevent delays.
Build Accountability
It is too easy to be distracted by a new project or idea and let ourselves off the hook when we get scared or things get hard. To build the highest chance of reaching your goals, find an accountability partner.
The American Society of Training and Development conducted a study and found these statistics:
Having an idea or goal: 10% likely to complete the goal
Consciously deciding that you will do it: 25%
Deciding when you will do it: 40%
Planning how to do it: 50%
Committing to someone that you will do it: 65%
Having a specific accountability appointment with someone you’ve committed to: 95%
If you are serious about reaching your goals, find someone who will help hold you to them. This accountability is built into my SOS Membership! Gain insight into how to do the work, accountability to actually reach your goals, and a community with other creative service providers.
Start Planning Your Next Project
You don’t have to lock yourself into a box to plan and reach your goals. You can keep your freedom and still have a plan to reach your goals.
Roughly plan out what steps will be required to reach your goal, track these steps, plan by week rather than by day, and find an accountability partner.
Get support to reach your goals.
FAQs About Project Planning
What is the best project management tool?
ClickUp is my favorite project management tool, but there are several others out there, like Trello, Asana, and Kitchen.co. It all depends on the interface you prefer and the features you need.
How do I create a project plan?
Follow these steps to create an effective project plan:
Define the project scope.
Identify tasks and milestones.
Assign responsibilities.
Set timelines and deadlines.
Allocate resources.
Identify risks and dependencies.
Document everything.
What does a good project plan look like?
The best project plans have clear objectives and goals, and detailed tasks to execute. Everyone knows their responsibilities and due dates. This will make sure the project is completed successfully and on time.
